The Truth
by blinkblink
Summary: The truth is, Hattori Heiji loves detecting. Short, introspective Heiji-centric piece. No pairings.


Disclaimer: Don't own Meitantei Conan or the characters. Which, really is JUST AS WELL.

Notes: Uh, yeah. Hello, Meitantei fandom! This started out as harmless, pointless introspection, and then grew a semi-plot somewhere along the way, probably because I was at the time thinking of writing a related fic. Which I may or may not do, but if so almost certainly not any time soon. INDECISION + 5.

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There is only one truth. It's a pet phrase Kudo likes to trot out at appropriate moments, but Hattori knew it long before he met the famous Detective of the East. It was, after all, the best part of his favourite novels. The challenge to the reader, to turn up that one truth alongside his hero Ellery Queen. And he did, almost every time – and if you asked him he would say every time, because that time when he was nine and sick in bed and stayed up until one am to finish reading _clearly doesn't count_.

 The truth is, Hattori Heiji loves detecting. He loves it the way arid land loves rain, baked soil cooling under its gentle touch, browning crops soaking up the moisture with desperate gratitude. It's not at all the same as emotion. He can be angry with his mistakes, or pleased by the work of the police, and on occasion he can even be shattered by the horrors people build and lay like vicious leg-hold traps to tear into physical and emotional flesh – both that of others and their own. None of these feelings apply to detection itself. It would be easier to say he needs it, but it would be a lie. Hattori wouldn't wilt and die without cases to solve, wouldn't waste away and crumble. But without the thrill of a case racing through his veins the world would be monochrome, and his life would be dry and tasteless. Kazuha calls it shining, when she thinks he's not listening, and however paltry and saccharine it sounds, it's true. Without his hobby, he wouldn't shine.

Kazuha also says he has a hard head. She means it as an insult, but that doesn't make it false. More importantly though, Hattori has a hard skin. More than important, it's necessary. He often thinks that it would be easier to do this job if he were doing it as anything other than what he is. A policeman, an inspector, a detective, they have an _excuse_. Sleuthing is their job, their livelihood, and without it there would be no bread on the table. It would even, he knows, be easier if he were doing it for some higher purpose. A sense of social justice, or to battle injustice or, even despite the gag reflex it causes, divine retribution. But he's not. Hattori does it because it's fun_._ Because for just one instant in a successful case the world twists until his mind is clear and sharp as diamond and for that split second _he knows everything._ He ruins lives, not for a living, not for a higher reason, but for the thrill of it. And if he makes a game of it, turns the whole thing into a joke, it's because it's what he's always done. And because it's easier to face the truth head on with confidence than to cower and expose his weaknesses.

Sometimes it doesn't matter. He can't bring himself to care when a selfish murdering bastard spits at him as he's dragged to the squad car. But he's seen others, so many others. Parents killing to avenge murdered children. Battered women poisoning violent husbands. Men blackmailed to within an inch of their lives destroying their tormentors. He holds his head up when they're marched past him, but meeting their eyes is hard, sometimes almost impossibly so. He's never once withheld his solution, not even to protect the ones his heart bleeds for. It can be painfully difficult, but he can chase criminals as a hobby and hold his head up. He couldn't play God and look anyone in the eye. That's a damn slippery slope, and he knows it.

The truth is, Hattori Heiji knows that one day, a case will probably come along that will break his resolution, that will mean quitting or lying. When he's just finished crushing his feelings to solve a case, he dreads that day. Dreads it more than very nearly anything else. On cases like this, he wears the omamori, not for sympathy or protection, but just for a tiny reassurance. A single prick of light in a black sky. He doesn't tell Kazuha, who worries about him much too much as it is.

He doesn't tell anyone, not Kazuha and certainly not Kudo who bows to the Holmesian alter which stands firmly on the fundamental pedestal of rationality above all, but Hattori Heiji spares just a smidgeon of belief for the supernatural. For whatever ridiculous and embarrassing reason, Kazuha's omamori seems to genuinely work, although usually he wears it as protection against Kazuha's complaints rather than actual danger. And, although generally he keeps it to himself, he is not above following the advice of his dreams. As far as he knows, he has no history of shrine-keepers in family, nor of other religiously-inclined ancestors, nor even of premonitions. But his grandfather spent most of his life on the ocean, and fishermen are renowned for their superstitions, as well as their occasional ability to pick the threads of the future out from the tapestry of the present. Whether he inherited his dreams along with his dark skin from his grandfather, or if they're a fluke, he has no idea. He knows he assigns them more weight than he should, and unless unavoidable he won't mention them. It's just as well they they're few and far between. But, they haven't been wrong yet, either.

A long time ago now, cases and cases ago, Kudo asked him if he had ever killed anyone. He didn't wait for an answer, and that was fine because the answer would have been a simple no. Hattori has no blood on his hands. He has ruined livelihoods, he has ruined families; he has even ruined lives, but apart from running over a stray cat on his motorbike, he has never killed.

The truth is, he will. Hattori doesn't know who, or when, or why. Doesn't know if it will be with his own hands hardened with deadly intent, or whether his actions will cause a suicide which he'll be unable to prevent. But he knows with complete certainty that, someday, he will take a life. Maybe more than one. Maybe a lot more. It might be knowledge that hobbies like his can only run on so long before the damage they do reaches a critical mass. It might be acceptance of the lifestyle he'll undoubtedly merge into, following his father. It might, and this is the explanation he believes in the back of these dark thoughts, be that the certainty comes from wherever the dreams do. He tries not to think about it too much.

Hattori isn't certain whether it wouldn't be better to kill with your own hands, than to have a death heaped over your shoulders, heavy and limp as a corpse, with no choice. It may be better to choose whose blood it is, and why it was spilt, than to have it poured on you. What might be worse is that he also knows the choice won't be left up to him. And he's relieved.

The truth is, Hattori Heiji is slightly more introspective than others give him credit for being. It comes in fits and starts, so that he goes for months at a time without thinking deep thoughts at all. It doesn't keep him up at night, and he doesn't mope around on sunny days – or rainy ones either – in gloomy fits. He leaves that to Kudo who, although admittedly has more on his plate, also could stand to have more fun. Maybe it's Kudo rubbing off on him, maybe it's just that he's climbed a long way from his low level childhood searches for lost pets to the dizzying heights of investigating murder, but he's been reflecting more lately. Whatever else he's realised, he knows that however much Kudo and even his own beloved novels may tote it, there is very rarely only one truth. Outside the walled garden of mysteries, there are very few things which have only one explanation, and that includes motivations.

The truth is, there's only one thing Hattori Heiji wants to do with his life, and that's to spend it sleuthing. And, the truth is that he's afraid more than very nearly anything else that his obsession with detecting might be the one thing which forces him to stop. It's not a rational fear, but it's one he's deeply familiar with. It curls, heavy and cold, in the pit of his stomach when he wakes from his dreams.


End file.
